PJC's Season Five
by PepperjackCandy
Summary: Season Five of Caroline as it should, imho, have been. Richard/Caroline, Annie/Del
1. Default Chapter

Title: PJC's Season 5 -- Caroline and the Unexpected Wedding  
Author: PepperjackCandy  
Archive: sincereamore.com, my writing at fanfiction.net  
Rating: PG  
Pairing: Caroline/Richard  
Spoilers for: Just about everything.  
  
Disclaimer: Caroline in the City belongs to Barron/Pennette, CBS, NBC and Three Sisters Entertainment. All of whom are most emphatically not me.  
  
Feedback: Always welcome, either by e-mail or using the review system at fanfiction.net.   
  
A/N: I know that "Midtown Manhattan" is kind of a cliché, but in 1988, I stayed at the Howard Johnson's in Midtown with my parents. It's the only part of New York I really *know*. Also, the baby food/cereal mixture that Richard feeds Stefano is what I did with my son once he was six months old. The rice cereal is iron-fortified, and the vitamin C added to the peaches releases the iron in the cereal. The pediatrician wanted me to mix the cereal with apple juice for the same reason, but ds wasn't having any of *that.*   
  
All events of Seasons 1-4 happened exactly as they did on the show. I think. Well, any changes will be pointed out as I get to them. 8-)  
  
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Fade in on Caroline's bedroom, where we hear the nicely well-modulated voice of the narrator, who in my ideal universe would probably be Kathleen Turner.  
  
How many of you would have the courage to walk out on your wedding, not just once, or twice, but three times? Caroline Duffy has done just that. Yes. Twenty hours after her wedding to Randy, she was still Caroline Duffy. She had just missed, in order, becoming Caroline Cassidy (which would have been a disaster from a monogramming standpoint), Caroline Karinsky, and Caroline Thorsen.   
  
Meanwhile, Richard Karinsky, he of the second failed wedding, was sleeping in his room in a hotel in Midtown. He wasn't alone in his hotel room, but his roommate wasn't the sort of person one usually woke up in strange hotel rooms with. It was, in fact, his infant son, Stefano.  
  
Caroline's best friend Annie was sleeping in another hotel room, this one in Atlantic City. She also was not alone. However, unlike Richard, her roommate *was* the sort of person one usually woke up in strange hotel rooms with, but that was all right, because the other person was her boyfriend of six months, Del Cassidy, who also happened to have been the groom in Caroline's first failed wedding. Wait! Annie's waking up. Let's watch.  
  
Annie stirred. She cracked open one eye and looked around. She saw another form in the bed with her.   
  
Furrowing her brow, she peeked over the shoulder of her bedmate and heaved a sigh of relief. _It's Del. Thank God. I wonder where I am?_  
  
She sat up. _A hotel room. All right._   
  
She lifted the covers and looked beneath them. _Naked. Not unusual._ Some odd impulse of modesty caused her to wrap the sheet around herself as she leaned out of bed to pick up her underpants. While she was leaning out of the bed, a sheet of paper caught her eye.   
  
She picked it up and read the heading aloud. "Certificate of . . Marriage?"  
  
***  
  
In his hotel room, Richard was awakened by his son's cry. He squinted at the clock. "10:00. Adjusted to New York time already?" He asked Stefano rhetorically. "And here I thought you were still on Italian time when you woke me up at 4:00 this morning."  
  
Richard got out of bed and rescued his son from his crib. He dug into the night table and pulled out a jar of peaches and a box of rice cereal. He mixed a little of the cereal into the peaches and took out a spoon. As he fed his son, he continued talking.  
  
"You'll get to really meet Caroline today. I called her last night and she agreed to meet us for lunch. We're going to go to a nice, quiet restaurant and I'm sure that you'll be on your best behavior. Right?" Stefano had a smudge of peach on his cheek, so Richard stopped to wipe it off. "And this stuff smells nasty. I think I'm going to have to give you a bath before you meet her."  
  
Richard smiled. "She doesn't always wear that big white dress, either. Though I wonder if she doesn't think she should start to." He added as an aside.  
  
"She usually wears these little dresses, and sometimes jeans, and . . . ." His voice faded as he remembered how cute Caroline usually looked. He wondered if she'd bother to look cute for him at lunch. He wondered if he had the right to wonder.  
  
Richard spooned the final bit of peach-and-rice mixture into his son's mouth. "She came really close to being your stepmother, too. But she's also my best friend, and I'd pass up any chance for romance with her again to be able to keep her friendship."   
  
He picked Stefano up, sighing. "I'd better get my shower. You'll be all right while I'm in there?" He placed Stefano in his crib, propping up a book so Stefano could see the pictures and then took some clean underwear from the dresser drawer and headed for the shower.  
  
***  
  
When Caroline woke up, her first thought was _Three times a bridesmaid, never a bride. I wonder what they'd say about a woman who's been a bride three times but never a wife? Sounds like something Shakespeare would say about a hooker._  
  
She rolled over and looked at the clock. _10:30. Seems as good a time as any to start my first day of still being Caroline Duffy._ As she stood up, she remembered that she had agreed to have lunch with Richard and Stefano, and sat back down on the bed -- hard.  
  
She immediately started listing things she needed to do -- shower, fix her hair, apply her makeup, get dressed, travel to the restaurant. _Fifteen minutes._ She glanced out the window at the traffic below. _No, better make it half an hour. And I'll take a cab, rather than the bus. So I have an hour to do the rest of it._  
  
She set to work, and forty-five minutes later, she stood in front of her mirror, her hair and makeup perfect, wearing a particularly cute dress -- brown, with a scoop neck and a flared skirt that ended just short of her knees. _Boy. I must really want to impress Stefano._ She thought, intentionally ignoring the fact that it was *Richard* that she'd dressed for.  
  
She was going to wait the fifteen minutes until she absolutely *had* to leave, but after about five minutes of pacing, she decided to just go ahead and leave.  
  
She exited her apartment, turning to lock the door behind her, as Annie and Del came up in the elevator. "Hey, Caroline." Annie greeted her friend. "You got a minute?"  
  
"Sorry. I'm just leaving to go to lunch with Richard. And Stefano. He wants me to meet Stefano." Her comment skidded to a stop as she realized she was babbling.  
  
"Well, have fun." Annie said with an odd smile. "We'll see you when you get back then?"  
  
"Yeah." Caroline smiled at Annie then headed for the elevator.  
  
After Caroline was gone, Annie fixed Del with a broad grin.   
  
"What're you grinning about?"  
  
"That dress that Caroline's wearing. She's never worn it before. She bought it for her honeymoon."  
  
"Her honeymoon?" Del asked.  
  
Annie nodded. "From the look of things, Caroline's considering getting back together with Richard. And maybe then she won't take our news as hard as we were afraid she would." 


	2. Caroline and Richard . . . and Stefano

Title: PJC's Season 5 -- #501, Caroline and Richard . . . and Stefano   
Author: PepperjackCandy  
Archive: sincereamore.com, my writing at fanfiction.net  
Rating: PG  
Pairing: Caroline/Richard, Annie/Del  
Spoilers for: Just about everything.  
  
Disclaimer: Caroline in the City belongs to Barron/Pennette, CBS, NBC and Three Sisters Entertainment. All of whom are most emphatically not me.  
  
Feedback: Always welcome, either by e-mail or using the review system at fanfiction.net.  
  
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Caroline hurried into the restaurant as quickly as she could in her new shoes. Despite her early start, she still managed to run late.   
  
The maitre d' took Caroline immediately to the table where Richard was waiting. "Sorry I'm late." She said, her eyes locked to Richard's.  
  
"That's all right." Richard drank in the sight of her. "It gave me a chance to feed Stefano."  
  
Belatedly, Caroline noticed Richard's son in his infant seat, some yellowy-beige paste around his mouth and dripping from his chin.  
  
"Oh. That's pears. Sorry." Richard mumbled as he grabbed a napkin and began dabbing the pureed pears from Stefano's face.  
  
Caroline stood transfixed by her first real look at Stefano. "He's beautiful."  
  
"Would you like to hold him?" Richard asked with shy hope.  
  
Caroline's eyes widened and she took a reflexive step back. "I don't think so. I don't know the first thing about babies."  
  
Richard smiled, his eyes twinkling. "Neither did I. Stefano's a good starter baby. He's very patient with novices."   
  
He turned and in a flash, had Stefano's harness unhooked. He picked the baby up a lot less carefully than Caroline expected, and hoisted him up to perch on his hip. "Stefano, this is Caroline. She's . . . my very best friend. And I hope that you and she will be friends, too."  
  
He held Stefano out to Caroline, who took him gingerly, as if he were a soap bubble, and not a baby. "How do I . . .?" She looked up at Richard in confusion, starting to tip Stefano over, like she wanted to hold him like a newborn.  
  
"Just hold him upright. He didn't like to be held lying down even when he was little. He likes to be cuddled in, towards your chest."  
  
Caroline turned Stefano in her arms so that the baby's legs were splayed around her tiny waist, supporting his bottom with one arm, while holding his back with the other.   
  
"Yeah. That's right. That's . . . perfect. You're a natural at this."  
  
Caroline smiled shyly at Richard, then looked back down at the baby. "So, you're Stefano, eh? I hope we'll be friends, too."   
  
Stefano grinned up into Caroline's face, and Caroline couldn't help but smile back.  
  
Richard watched them, his heart swelling with happiness, daring to hope for the first time that perhaps Caroline would take him back, but he ruthlessly squashed that hope down when Caroline looked up at him.  
  
"You should probably put him back in his . . . seat before we eat." She said, holding Stefano out awkwardly.  
  
Richard took his son from her and settled him back into the baby carrier. Then, smiling at Caroline, he took his seat.   
  
Caroline sat in the seat across the table from him. "So how've things been lately?" She asked in a deceptively calm voice.  
  
Richard bobbed his head a couple of times. "Good. Good. Most of my time has been devoted to Stefano, of course. Babies take a lot of time."  
  
"And what about your painting?"  
  
"Oh, I've got a few canvases on the easel back in Italy. I suppose that since I'm not going back for a while, though, I should have them shipped here."  
  
"You're staying in New York?" Caroline asked, surprised.  
  
Richard looked at Caroline as though she'd slapped him. "Is that all right?"  
  
"Yes. Of course. I was just . . . surprised. That's all." She paused for a minute, trying to work out how to ask an indelicate question. "What . . . I mean, how . . . It's very expensive, living in New York."  
  
Richard smiled softly. "No, I don't need a job," he said, anticipating the question she was leading up to. "I already have one lined up."  
  
"Really?"   
  
"Painting trompe l'oiel murals and things. It won't pay much, but it'll keep food on the table. Plus . . . I have some money set aside." He mumbled the last sentence.  
  
Apparently, Caroline had pretty good ears. "You have some money set aside? Boy, your employer must have been pretty generous." She kidded.  
  
He looked up at her quietly. "Actually, it's not from working for you, or GMD or anything like that."  
  
"Oh?"  
  
"No." He feigned fascination with his menu.  
  
"Are you going to tell me where the money came from?"  
  
"Not really."  
  
"You wouldn't have brought it up if you didn't want to tell me."  
  
"Yes, I would have. I just . . ." He sighed. "You remember that song that Annie's sister Donna wrote?"  
  
Caroline nodded.   
  
"Well, I . . . well, the lyrics were sort of . . . I wrote a letter to you once, telling you how I felt about you, and Annie found it, and kept a copy, which Donna found and used for the lyrics to her song and she gave me credit as lyricist and the single sold really well and I didn't want to think about it and so I just shoved all of the royalties into investments, and the investments did really well so Stefano and I can live on that money for quite a while until the mural painting takes off."  
  
He said this in such a rush, that Caroline was surprised he wasn't blue in the face when he was done. And his announcement was such a surprise that all she could answer was, "Oh."  
  
After the waiter took their beverage orders, Richard took his glasses off, rubbing his face. Without putting his glasses back on, he looked searchingly into her eyes. "I want to be frank with you."  
  
"Oh?"  
  
"Yes." He reached over and took her hand. "I still love you. I never stopped. And I was wondering if we could start over."  
  
Caroline's heart broke. "I can't Richard. Not right now." She tried to communicate her dismay in her eyes.  
  
Richard looked down. "I suppose it was too much to hope for . . ."  
  
"No, Richard." She put her hand on his cheek, gently guiding his eyes back to hers. "I didn't say forever. Just . . . I need some time. Some breathing space."  
  
"I see. I'm crowding you. I understand."  
  
"No. No you're not. But I went from being engaged to you to being engaged to Randy so quickly that I just need some time to be just me. Though no rule says that I can't spend a lot of time with my best friend." She said these last words pointedly.  
  
"Your best friend?" She was probably talking about Annie. Richard couldn't possibly hope that she meant him.  
  
"Yes, silly. You."   
  
Richard couldn't help breaking out in a goofy grin. "Really?"  
  
"Yes. Really. Now, what are we going to have for lunch? I'm starved." Caroline grinned at him as she turned back to her menu.  
  
Next: #502 - Caroline and the Foreign Investor 


End file.
